Re: [mv] Running a CGI program from minivend

[Ryan Hertz <rhertz@gyb.baits.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from Ryan Hertz <rhertz@gyb.baits.com>     ******

At 09:49 AM 1/14/2000 , you wrote:
>******    message to minivend-users from "Geoffrey Hennessey" 
><hennesse@sympatico.ca>     ******
>
>I'm trying to do something I thought would be fairly simple, but so far it's
>turned out to be a
>complete nightmare...my website currently uses a simple web counter based on
>a CGI program
>which is usually activated using SSI.  I like the program and the stats it
>generates, so it's a shame
>to ditch it.  I could put it on an entrance page to the catalog, but that
>seems like a shame because
>it would really be the only reason for the entrance page.
>
>I've been through the archive on SSI, CGI, running perl scripts and so
>on...I grabbed ssi.pm
>but I'm not very clear on how to make it work, and it doesn't seem like it
>would run a CGI
>program anyway.  Although I may be wrong about that.

         Yes, Apache thinks that it is a Bad Thing to allow SSI from a CGI.


>Normally I just include:
>
><!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/bbstats/stats.cgi?mypage"-->
>
>Which increments the counter and returns a number I embed on the page.

         I personally think that publicly visible counters are stupid.  ;-)


>I understand that I can't use SSI because the minivend pages are returning
>through CGI.  Is there
>some way I could do this using embedded Perl?  It seems like it shouldn't be
>security risk to run
>it, but I'm not entirely clear on what restrictions Safe.pm applies.  Are
>there details on that
>anywhere?

         There is some info in the mailing list about this, but since 
you're still learning Perl I would be careful messing with Safe.  If the 
counter happens to be Perl, you could run it inside the page by simply 
enclosing it in [perl] tags.  However....


>I'm using MiniVend 3.14-4 on a Linux server running Apache.  I've only been
>experimenting with
>Minivend for a couple of weeks, and my Perl is weak, so any help would be
>appreciated.

         Since you're running Linux and Apache, why not get a REAL stats 
program, forget the SSI and all the (albeit small) overhead associated with 
that.  Check out analog for a stats engine.  It reads your Apache logfile 
and can give you more meaningful information than a counter does.  Of 
course, let's not forget that Minivend does logging also!  Anyways, check out
  http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/analog/  It's free, so you don't 
have any excuses.  :-)



>Thanks,
>
>Geoff.
>
>-
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